I'm Thinking About Writing a Book. Here's Why—And I Need Your Help.

Over the past year, something unexpected happened.

The essays I’ve written here about independent thinking—how we’re losing it, why it matters, what to do about it—started resonating in ways I didn’t anticipate. The YouTube videos on thinking skills got shared more than anything else I’ve created. The posts about cognitive autonomy sparked the longest, most thoughtful comment threads I’ve had on any of my posts.

And the feedback was consistent: “This needs to be a book.”

Not another 500-page academic treatise on critical thinking. Not business mental models or cognitive biases rehashed. Something different: a focused, practical, 100-page guide to thinking independently when everything around us is designed to think for us.

So I’m doing it. And I’m inviting you into the process.

What I’m Building

The working title is “Thinking Independence: How to Think For Yourself When Everything Wants to Think For You.”

It’s built on a simple premise: Our ability to think independently is the foundation of every freedom we have. Without it, we think we are voting freely, speaking freely, choosing freely—yet we are still completely controlled. Because someone else is doing our thinking.

The book teaches two core skills most of us have lost:

Evaluation Independence: How to assess whether claims are true—not just whether sources seem credible. How to spot when you’re choosing from a menu designed to control where you end up.

Decision Independence: How to make decisions when you don’t have perfect information. How to stop escaping to: “what would successful people do?” , “what does my tribe believe?” — and start owning your choices.

100 pages. No fluff. Tools you can use immediately.

Why I’m Sharing This Now

I’ve written a concept document—what the book would be, who it’s for, what you’d get from it. It’s not a proposal for publishers. It’s the pitch I’d give to you if we were having coffee and you asked: “So what’s this book about?”

I’m sharing it because your feedback matters.

If this resonates, I want to know what specifically hooks you. If something’s unclear or missing, I need to hear that. If you’d buy this book or recommend it to someone, that tells me something important. If you wouldn’t, that tells me something more important.

This project only moves forward if it’s genuinely useful to people who, like me, have sensed something shifting in how we all think—and want to do something about it.

What I’m Asking

1. Download the PDF (PDF below)
Read the concept document. It takes 5-7 minutes.

2. Take the 3-minute survey (link below)
Tell me what resonates, what doesn’t, and whether you’d actually read this book.

3. Forward it to someone (optional)
If you know someone who’d be interested in this project—or who struggles with thinking independently—send it their way.

The Links

📄 Download the concept PDF: Concept 'thinking Independence' Book ∙ PDF file Download

📋 Take the survey: https://forms.gle/g1DWFwX6Zx2oVM7Q7

What Happens Next

I’ll compile the feedback, see if this concept has legs, and decide whether to move forward. If enough people want this book and the positioning is right, I’ll write it. If not, I’ll know that too—and that’s valuable information.

Either way, thank you for being part of this. The work I do here—the essays, the videos, the ideas—exists because you engage with it. This book project is just an extension of that conversation.

Let me know what you think.

— Phil

P.S. If you have thoughts that don’t fit the survey format, just reply to this email. I read everything.